Articles from Vol. 20, No. 27, July 7

Noting that preempting "harmful actions" by state and local governments was a strong motivation for a new Presidential strategy on global electronic commerce, President Clinton and Vice President Gore released a proposed federal policy and framework...

President Clinton offered to meet House and Senate Republicans part way on tax breaks as House and Senate tax writers prepared to meet this week to begin to work out their differences on nearly two thousand pages worth of tax increases and tax breaks....

By advance billing, President Clinton's address to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, meeting in San Francisco in late June, was to encompass the first comprehensive urban agenda of his 4 1/2-year-old administration. Simultaneously, the White House...

Attendees at the 1997 Congress of Cities in Philadelphia will be meeting in what has been described as one of the most beautiful and useful convention centers in the country, the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The $523 million Center has made Philadelphia...

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) pledged to look into concerns raised by members of the Small Cities Council Steering Committee about prohibition of state and local taxes for Internet and online services and to continue to work on behalf of cities and towns...

One-Size-Fits-All Approach Rejected Bowing to enormous opposition from local governments and other public employer groups, the 1200 Committee on Fire Service Organization and Deployment of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) abandoned...

At the completion of its summer meeting, members of the Board of Directors of the Hispanic Elected Local Officials (HELO) of NLC made a strong commitment to focus on providing opportunities for students through a number of new avenues that HELO will...

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court recently overturned the portion of the 1993 Brady handgun control law that requires state and local law enforcement officers to conduct background checks on prospective handgun purchasers. "The Federal Government...

When her neighbor's brush pile grew into an unsightly mound, an irritated Dagni Harkema looked no farther than her son's elementary school for help. She didn't have to call city hall in Scottsdale, Ariz. Instead, she sought a familiar face just...

"While parents will always have the ultimate responsibility for protecting their children, government should help provide them the tools to do that in areas where the parent has little access or control, such as with the Internet. We have already...

A majority of city leaders in the United States believe the rise of a more competitive global economy has brought more benefits, overall, than disadvantages for their communities. A NLC survey released last week also describes the ways in which...

Local elected officials from 20 states gathered to discuss developments on key federal issues such as electric utility deregulation and telecommunications, and to explore new approaches for dealing with the day-to-day challenges of governing smaller...

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of State and Local Government in Religious Freedom Ruling

The Supreme Court struck down a second federal mandate and intrusion into traditional state and local authority last week when it overturned the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA). Saying that the sweeping coverage of the Act "ensures...

Many U.S. cities are losing their downtown street trees to a new enemy: metal grates. The problem comes when private developers install metal grates around trees and then fail to expand them over time, causing the trees to eventually strangle...